The Department of Anthropology at the University of Calgary invites applications for the Canadian Defence and Foreign Affairs Institute (CDFAI) Chair in Civil-Military Relations. The position is a full-time, tenure track position at the Assistant Professor rank, with a joint appointment in the Centre for Military and Strategic Studies (CMSS). The successful applicant will teach courses at all levels in the Social and Cultural Anthropology Baccalaureate Program, and supervise masters and doctoral students in the Department of Anthropology, as well as in the graduate program of the CMSS. In the CMSS, the successful applicant will supervise graduate students interested in the relations between militaries and democracies. Duties in the Department of Anthropology will include instruction of undergraduate and graduate courses in civil-military relations and in the anthropology of the military, war and conflict.

Applicants must have a completed PhD, have conducted ethnographic research and have publications (or show promise of publications) on topics related to the military or civil-military relations broadly defined, and must show promise of developing a long-term funded research plan. Theoretical and geographical research areas are open. A list of possible subject concentrations includes: armed groups; state/non-state conflict; post conflict reconstruction and/or development; veterans; effects of war on combatants and non-combatants; health, medicine, and the military; refugee studies; indigenous participation in military institutions; technology and war; military/media/government relations; anthropology of policy related to armed forces and defence.

The Department of Anthropology is a dual track program that offers undergraduate and graduate degrees in social-cultural anthropology and primatology. The CDFAI is a charitable, independent, non-partisan, research institute with an emphasis on Canadian Foreign Policy, Defence Policy, and International Aid. The CMSS is a research centre at the University of Calgary and part of the Security and Defence Forum, a network specializing in defence and security studies across Canada.

NOTES: International Candidates Will Be Considered

It has only recently been added to the job listings on the CASCA website.

Not wanting to judge this prematurely, members of AJP collectively sent the following letter, with questions, to the Chair of the Department, Mary Pavelka:

Dear Dr. Pavelka,
Along with our fellow anthropologists (Martin Hébert, Alex Khasnabish, Craig Proulx, Angela Robinson, and Robin Oakley), I am writing to you out of concern for a job advertisement recently posted with the American Anthropological Association (http://careercenter.aaanet.org/jobs#/detail/3694010). Given that the position has been publicly advertised in Canada and abroad, and that the University of Calgary is a publicly funded institution, and the Canadian Defence and Foreign Affairs Institute (CDFAI) is a publicly registered tax-exempt charity, we appreciate your open and non-confidential responses.

To be clear, we are not writing to challenge the academic freedom of any candidate that your Department may choose to hire. We are also not questioning your prerogative in autonomously setting your own goals as a Department. What we are doing is more in the tradition of peer review out of concern for the public and international reputation of anthropology, at a time when an accumulation of dozens of international media reports of anthropologists working in counterinsurgency has reinforced or revived older ways of seeing anthropologists as agents of foreign states, and possible spies. Thus while we neither question nor challenge academic freedom or departmental autonomy (to the extent that the latter may exist), we do have questions about the decisions of larger entities (universities, defense institutes) in creating certain positions to begin with, and how this may impact the reputation of the discipline and those anthropologists working in politically sensitive and perilous areas.

In particular, as persons who may be asked to write letters of recommendation for potential candidates for that position, we do need to know more about the position, to better understand it and make the process more transparent.

Specifically, these are our questions:

1. What is the history behind how this position came to be created, and how did the CDFAI come to be involved?

2. Why is your department interested in having someone that covers the issue areas listed in the position description, which are not the usual sorts of topics one sees advertised in any other anthropology positions advertised in Canada? What was the impetus and rationale in creating this position?

3. What is the nature of the relationship between the Department and the CDFAI, and specifically, would the candidate be answerable to the CDFAI in any manner after being hired?

4. Will the search committee guarantee that it will seriously consider applicants with interests in the issue areas listed in the position description, but from an angle that is critical of the military and security uses of anthropology, and of the increased militarism in Canadian public discourse?

5. Why are ethics not listed as one of the key concerns associated with this position?

6. Why is there no mention of a Canadian anti-war movement, or an anti-war perspective, as a basis for understanding civil-military relations?

7. In which ways do you expect a successful candidate to contribute to Canadian anthropology as a whole?

8. Why was this position advertised with the AAA, but not with CASCA?

9. In opening the position to non-Canadian candidates, and advertising in the AAA, how do you propose to deal with the ethical problems posed by American applicants who may have worked with the military in the occupation of Iraq and/or Afghanistan, who may have been recipients of scholarships from the Pat Roberts Intelligence Scholars Program (PRISP), the National Security Education Program (NSEP), or the Intelligence Community Scholars Program (ICSP), and who possibly maintain continuing ties with American national security, military, and intelligence agencies?

10. From which sources do you expect a successful applicant to seek funding? Please name these.

11. In particular, which courses do you hope a successful candidate will teach? Can you please offer some sample titles?

12. Which research products or services is a successful candidate required to perform for the CDFAI?

13. Would a candidate be likely to conduct research on specific communities and groups in Canada, and would information derived from this research be provided to the CDFAI alone?

We appreciate your time and consideration in addressing these questions, and to be clear again, we do intend to circulate your responses to those interested, including any possible non-response.

We believed this to be a collegial letter free of premature accusations. The first response we received is that we would have to wait until Department members returned from the annual pilgrimage to the meetings of the American Anthropological Association. Soon after their supposed return, the following is the entirety of what we received as a response:

Sorry for the delay in responding, things have been very busy the past few weeks. Again, thank you for your interest in our position. The advertised position is the replacement of an existing chair that has been left empty by the retirement of Dr. Anne Irwin (PhD in Anthropology, U Manchester). We are looking to hire another excellent anthropologist who does research in the indicated areas. We are open to anthropologists of any analytical persuasion, including critical, and the evaluation of candidates will be on the basis of academic excellence, and fit with the areas and qualifications specified in the advertisement. The position is posted on the CASCA website.

Please encourage anyone you know who might be interested to apply. We are, of course, hoping to have a strong pool of qualified anthropologists to choose from.

Mary

Given the fact that most of our questions were ignored, members of AJP will of course not encourage anyone to apply for this position, and interested candidates will be well advised to notethe lack of transparency about this position, the many troubling questions it raises (which are deliberately left unanswered), and the reason to thus maintain a high level of suspicion about the nature and purpose of the position. We encourage all faculty to refuse to write letters of reference for anyone interested in applying. Members of CASCA who are legitimately concerned about such a position being advertised, are encouraged to file their complaints with the CASCA Executive.

The U.S. Army's Human Terrain System (HTS), which incorporates social scientists into counterinsurgency in Iraq and Afghanistan, and which for most of its history actively sought to recruit anthropologists, is now showing signs not just of continuing but of expanding, while attracting the interest of the U.S.' military allies including Canada. Readers may recall that this program was actively condemned, first by the Network of Concerned Anthropologists (which circulated a U.S. and international petition garnering over 1,000 signatures, including dozens from the heads of some of the U.S.' leading anthropology programs), followed by a denunciation from the Executive Board of the American Anthropological Association, and finally roundly criticized in an extensive review by the AAA's Commission on the Engagement of Anthropology with the U.S. Security and Intelligence Communities (CEAUSSIC)--see the executive summary and media coverage here, and the actual report here. To date, the Canadian Anthropology Society (CASCA) has remained silent on the issue of the militarization of anthropology, reportedly/allegedly because it cannot take a public stand on political issues lest it jeopardize its status as a non-profit "charitable" organization. Anthropologists for Justice and Peace was, in part, formed so that anthropologists in Canada could speak publicly to such matters, and we have condemned and rejected HTS and all variants.

HTS seemed to undergo a long period of disarray, dogged by reports of corruption, mismanagement, and poor training, in addition to confirmed reports of serious ethical violations. These reports included: the pilfering of confidential field notes by HTS social scientists--by members of their own units--which were then fed to military intelligence--see analysis of Wikileaks data here--and U.S. Army admissions that Human Terrain Teams (HTTs) have been useful for the kind of "refined targeting" that was the substance of many accusations by anthropologists in the U.S. In addition, multiple reports confirm that one of HTS' roles is gathering intelligence. Now it seems that HTS is resurgent. Following a Congressionally-mandated investigation (which remains secret), HTS was faulted on "managerial" grounds--however, the two top managers, Col. Steve Fondacaro and anthropologist Montgomery Carlough-McFate have since been sacked, effectively removing that as an issue in the eyes of legislators. After claiming that it is not a "military anthropology" program, after sustained opposition by the AAA, HTS continues to deliberately market itself as "anthropology" in news media around the world (example 1, examples 2, examples 3). Moreover, McFate has been replaced as the social science director by yet another anthropologist, Dr. Christopher A. King (shown in the photo). King is a forensic anthropologist, whose doctoral dissertation was titled, "Osteometric Assessment of 20th Century Skeletons from Thailand and Hong Kong," and seems to not be a specialist in the kind of socio-cultural fieldwork that HTS boasts as a specialty--but he carries the important label, "anthropologist." Dr. King recently attended CASCA's 2009 conference in Vancouver, where he sat in on panels about the militarization of anthropology, as an official representative of HTS.

The Army is ramping up its controversial Human Terrain Systems program and will be sending more teams to Afghanistan this summer while simultaneously working with allied nations seeking to develop their own HTS capabilities, according to the program’s director [Colonel Sharon Hamilton]....

...the program continues to grow, despite various criticisms from academia and government. Col. Sharon Hamilton said in a Dec. 8 interview that U.S. Central Command has issued a requirement for 31 HTS teams in Afghanistan – an increase of nine teams — by this summer....

In addition, it seems that HTS is being actively marketed to U.S. allies, and the report specifically mentions an unnamed "Canadian general" who is interested in the program:

Hamilton also said her program has been working with allied nations that want to develop their own HTS programs. She would not say which countries were interested, but noted that a Canadian general was said to be very impressed with the program.

“We directly support six allied nations and they are all very interested,” she said. “Several of the allies have approached the Department of the Army wanting to develop their own capability because they have our teams with them in Afghanistan. We’re doing knowledge exchanges [and] we’ve have several representatives from other countries visit our training, visit our teams on the ground in Afghanistan.”

Furthermore, the HTS director is promising more active engagement with anthropologists in particular, in what can only be a new recruitment effort:

Hamilton said she also has stepped up the program’s engagement with the academic community by attending conferences for relevant groups, namely the American Anthropological Association, an organization that has remained steadfastly critical of the program.

An overview of HTS on the website of the U.S. Army also indicates that a geographic expansion of HTS will occur, in addition to a multiplication in the number of teams:

The near term demand from Iraq will continue at current levels while the demand for teams in Afghanistan is increasing; with the potential of adding 12 additional teams in the next two years. The HTS has a request for support from Combined Joint Task Force-Horn of Africa and additional requests from United States Forces Korea and United States Pacific Command.

For all of the organized opposition by anthropologists, it would seem as if our real work in prying anthropology loose of this imperialist grip has only just begun. AJP invites all Canadian anthropologists to join it in maintaining a vigilant eye on related developments in Canada, and to forward any news to anthrojustpeace@gmail.com.

Corrections (thanks to an email received from Dr. Christopher King):

*Dr. King not a forensic anthropologist: "I used to practice forensic anthropology but have not practiced since 2007. My undergraduate, MA, PhD are all in anthropology. However, I am currently employed as a U.S. Department of Army social scientist, not an anthropologist. To be clearer my undergraduate was a double major in anthropology and museum studies."

*His doctoral dissertation was not titled, "Osteometric Assessment of 20th Century Skeletons from Thailand and Hong Kong". This was his MA thesis.

His doctoral dissertation is entitled, "Stable isotopic analysis of carbon and nitrogen as an indicator of Paleodietary change among pre-state Metal Age societies in northeast Thailand", 2006. University of Hawaii at Manoa.

Finally, "While my academic work has been in the anthropological sub-discipline of biological anthropology, I have always engaged in applied anthropology work, both forensic and sociocultural, to make a living."

This is the archive of what was formerly the webpage of AJP. It now consists entirely of the essays and posts published by AJP founder, Maximilian C. Forte, associate professor in the Department of Sociology and Anthropology, at Concordia University in Montreal (maximilian.forte@concordia.ca). AJP was a Canadian organization for anthropologists interested in supporting struggles for self-determination, decolonizing knowledge production, and resisting the corporatization and militarization of the academy.